Worthy
Manner
Caring for those who go out
for the sake of The Name
INTRODUCTION
Res ources to en courag e, equ ip and enabl e you
Worthy Manner
Caring for those who go out for the sake of the Name
You demonstrate faithfulness by whatever you do for the brothers
(even though they are strangers). They have testified to your love before the church.
You will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God. For they
have gone forth on behalf of “The Name: (3 John 1:5-8)
W
hat does it mean to send a missionary on his way in
a manner worthy of God? Jesus said that whoever
does not honor the Son does not honor the Father
who sent him (John 5:23). The converse would also be
true: when we honor the sent one we honor the sender.
One aspect of worthy support for missionaries might
include honor. When we treat them with honor, we
ultimately honor the Father who sent them. What does that
look like?
I might suggest right from the start that it does not mean to
put missionaries on a pedestal, as though they were
somehow beyond temptation or the need for continuing
transformation. We do well to remember that we are all cut
from the same cloth, so to speak, with strengths, weaknesses, successes and skeletons in our closets. That reality
Worthy Manner
Caring for those who go out for the sake of the Name
provides us with many effective bridges for empathetic
care. But neither should we treat them as if they, laborers
in the harvest, are not worthy of fair wages. Missionaries
do not necessarily take a vow of poverty, for instance,
though many of them may be forced to live on very little.
The old (and not so funny) joke about sending used tea
bags to the mission field comes to mind. We do not honor
them when we give them only those items that are no
longer useful to us.
We can work
toward a
balanced
perspective
by considering how we
might send them in the same manner God himself would
send them. In reality, God the Son has sent us all. When
we look at the way in which he did that we will gain insights
into how we should send harvest workers from our local
congregations. We can begin by turning to John 20:21,
where Jesus originally commissioned his disciples.
Jesus tells his disciples that he is sending them out as the
Father sent him. That is a reference not just to the fact that
the Father sent the Son, but also to the manner in which he
sent him. A valuable study would be to examine the nature
of Jesus’ “sent-ness” to see what the Father provided for
the Son, how the Son responded, the sense of responsibility that the sender had toward the sent one and vice
versa, and how all that played out in the actual ministry of
Jesus on Earth. With that as a background, Jesus now
sends his protégés out with parallel expectations.
Jesus knew what his followers would need in order to fulfill
their assignment. He provided them with all the
necessities—everything required for success.
Worthy Manner
Caring for those who go out for the sake of the Name
Before he commissioned those future propagators of the faith,
and before he left this planet to carry on his work throne-side,
Jesus assured them that they would have:
His never-ending
Presence
His never-failing
Protection
His omnipotent
Provision
and
His omniscient
Perspective
In the next four successive papers we will look at each of these
provisions in terms of caring for missionaries in a worthy manner.
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